


To Whom You Gave Life

by Netgirl_y2k



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Motherhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-05
Updated: 2011-12-05
Packaged: 2017-10-26 23:11:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/288931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/pseuds/Netgirl_y2k
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Catelyn loves Robb more than her own life, but Cersei Lannister has her daughters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Whom You Gave Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [estamir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/estamir/gifts).



> Thank you to anjali_organna for the very helpful beta reading.

"They have your sisters," she tells Robb. "We have to get the girls back, and then _we will kill them all."_

And in that moment, Cat means it.

*

Robb has ruined his sword; they forge him a fine new one to go with his crown.

Cat looks at him, this boy, man, _king_ whom she'd laboured for a day and a half to bring into the world, and thinks that he will make a finer king than fat, drunken Robert Baratheon ever had, finer than Cersei Lannister's son ever could.

*

It had taken more than a day and Cat had been convinced that Robb's birth was going to kill her. But when they finally pulled the babe from her body and placed him on her breast, red faced and screaming at the indignity, she knew, she _knew_ that she would gladly lay down her life for his, and that this would be true until the day she died.

As the days and weeks passed he looked more like her, with Tully colouring to his eyes and hair, and Cat delighted in every fibre of her son's being.

Then Ned returned from war, the husband Cat barely knew. He had won his war and Cat had borne him a strong son, neither task lesser than the other, to Cat's mind.

Ned returned with another woman's son in his arms. Jon Snow - although it would be years before Cat thought of the boy by any other name than Ned's bastard - had her lord husband's look in a way that it was already obvious Robb never would.

When his new son was brought to him, Ned took the boy in his arms and said, "He looks like you, my lady."

When he looked at her Cat saw that his eyes glistened with unshed tears and that he meant no condemnation. She thought, _Yes_ , I could come to love this man as much as I love his son.

*

Robb wears his crown well, but he is young and it rests heavily on his brow, and Cat desperately wants to lessen his burden.

She sits in on his councils and is unsure of how much she should say. Ned always welcomed her advice, but it is one thing for the lord of Winterfell to accept counsel from his lady wife, quite another for the King in the North to be seen listening too much to his mother.

She makes some small suggestions about treating with the lords of the south. The men surrounding Robb are brave, true, and loyal to her son, but they know little of the south, as little as Catelyn Tully had known of the north when she first travelled to Winterfell. And they will need allies if they are to march on King's Landing.

When Robb asks her to be his envoy to Renly, and later to Stannis, she goes gladly. It needs to be done and it is a task that she is better suited to than anyone else. Little and less comes of it in the end, but it is a way of making herself useful to Robb. She knows what the men in the camp say to her son when they think she cannot hear: that a war camp is no place for a woman, a king's mother at that; worse, she fears Robb is starting to listen to them.

"Maybe you should go back to Winterfell, Mother. Bran and Rickon will have need of you. Did I tell you Bran can ride now?"

Robb has told her, a dozen times and more, and Cat never tires of hearing it. She longs to see it for herself. No mother should favour one of her children over the others; but even Ned, who loved all his children with a feeling so deep and true that it gladdened Cat's heart to see it had a special place in his heart for Arya, who reminded him so much of his lost sister. In the same way Bran is special to Cat. She would give almost anything to see him alive and awake and mounted upon his horse, to take Rickon into her arms and tell him stories of his father long into the night so that he can never, _ever_ forget.

"Do you doubt the strength of Winterfell's walls?" she asks Robb. "The loyalty of the men you set to protect your brothers?"

Cat doesn't know how to explain it. She can think of no safer place in the Seven Kingdoms for Bran and Rickon than Winterfell, and none more precarious than where Robb finds himself now.

"She has your sisters, Robb. Cersei Lannister _has my daughters."_

*

Sansa's birth had been no easier than Robb's, but Cat knew now that this was how it should be and didn't panic. Ned was wearing through the floor outside and panicking enough for both of them.

Robb was precious to her, but Sansa was special in a different way; she was the first child she and Ned had made out of love, and not just duty.

Arya had nearly killed her mother, determined up until the last possible moment to come out upside down and back to front.

*

They have friends in King's Landing. Spies, really. Cat obsessively goes over every word that arrives by raven.

"Still no news of Arya?" Robb asks, being polite. He, of course, sees every report long before Cat.

"No. Sansa is still betrothed to Joffrey, but there's been no word of Arya. What is she _playing at?_ If I were Cersei Lannister--" she sees the mask of the King in the North slip momentarily and Robb makes a face, a shadow of a smile tugs at Cat's mouth "--if I were Cersei, I'd betroth Arya to the younger boy to bind them closer to the iron throne."

"I remember Tommen at Winterfell," Robb says. "He played at swords with Bran, and Bran knocked him down in the snow. Arya would eat him alive." Cat smiles at that. Robb pauses and then continues, frowning. "You don't think that the Lannisters have killed her?"

"Cersei Lannister isn't that much of a fool."

*

Cat prays day and night that Cersei Lannister isn't that much of a fool. There was a time when Cat hadn't thought Cersei stupid enough to kill Ned. But the queen is a mother too, surely even she would balk at murdering little girls, she _must._

If there were any room in Cat's heart for anything other than grief and worry she would curse herself for letting the Imp slip through her fingers.

*

The Kingslayer moves with the camp. Even in fetters and guarded day and night Robb doesn't want him too far out of sight.

Cat remembers the queen and her brothers at Winterfell and it strikes her deep in the heart; she always, _always_ had the wrong brother.

*

Ravens fly north and south carrying terms of peace. There won't be any peace, but everyone pretends it is possible while the two massive armies move themselves into position.

Robb asks for the return of his father's bones, his father's sword and his sisters. In that order.

"You don't think I want Sansa and Arya back too?" he says later.

Cat hates herself for doubting him almost as much as she hates that she was right to doubt.

"Oh, my boy... Not like I do."

"The Lannisters would never have given them up."

"They might. If we made the offer sweet enough"

"The Kingslayer is too valuable to--" Robb stops before he says that the Kingslayer is too valuable to trade for two girls, for his sisters, for Cat's daughters, but that's what he means.

Her son has always had a beautiful face, a handsome face, a kingly face, and right now Cat can't bear to look at it.

*

The Lannisters do send Ned's bones back.

 _Kill them all_ , Cat had told Robb, and meant every word. But she imagines the Lannisters sending Sansa's bones to her, or Arya's, how small they would be. After that, clawing out Cersei Lannister's eyes with her own hands wouldn't fill the void in Cat's heart.

"Oh, my love," she says, praying that some shade of Ned can hear her, "I could never have saved you. I had the wrong brother."

*

"How well does your sister love you?"

Jaime Lannister laughs at that, as though it's a joke, as though any of this is a joke. "Well enough for your purposes, Lady Stark."

*

Cat writes to Cersei Lannister; her brother for Sansa and Arya, unharmed.

Robb will understand, he must. "We have to get the girls back," she'd told him, " _and then_ we will kill them all."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] To Whom You Gave Life by Netgirl_y2k](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10737807) by [originally reads (originally)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/originally/pseuds/originally%20reads)




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